J_from_Holland wrote:I'll use /iːj/ then for the <y>. By the way, is a vowel with ː pronounced longer than a vowel without ː ? Or does it mark the stress?
Yep, /ː/ is the IPA symbol for length. It can be used with vowels or consonants. For example, /iː/ is a long /i/, and /tː/ is a long (AKA geminate or geminated) /t/. If you see something like /iːː/, that's an "overlong" version of /i/, pronounced longer than /iː/. You could technically write /iː iːː tː/ as /ii iii tt/ in some cases, but that might sometimes be ambiguous. From what I've seen, most people prefer to use /ː/ to indicate length, especially on vowels.
Stressed syllables are marked with /ˈ/ before them. In monosyllabic words, stress is typically not transcribed, because there is only one syllable that could be stressed. Sometimes, a word has both primary and secondary stress, secondary stress being the weaker of the two. /ˈ/ is placed before the syllable carrying primary stress, and /ˌ/ is placed before a syllable with secondary stress. I'd recommend reading more about stress and especially
secondary stress on Wikipedia, especially since the article on secondary stress seems to give both English and Dutch examples. There might be some words in some languages with multiple secondary "stresses"; I'm not even close to being an expert on stress and similar topics.
J_from_Holland wrote:Phonemes/phones/allophones.
Hmm… I'm not sure if I can do a good job of defining these for you. I'm providing Wikipedia links as well. These aren't difficult concepts once you get them, but I'm finding them very difficult to explain in a way that I'm satisfied with.
Phonemes
Phones
Allophones
Spoken languages have phonemic inventories - inventories of phonemes. These are the sounds that speakers distinguish from one another and put together to make words. /p t k/, for example, are three of the phonemes found in English's phonemic inventory. Because they are phonemes, they are written between slashes /like this/.
Now let's take two English words: <pin> and <spin> (orthographic representations of words go <here>). Phonemically, <pin> in (generally) /pɪn/, and <spin> is /spɪn/.
Phones are the exact sounds that make up languages, but that are not necessarily thought of as distinct by speakers. Phones are written between brackets [like this]. The <p> in both <pin> and <spin> is phonemically /p/, but when we look at phones (phonetically as opposed to phonemically), it's actually two different consonants. Phonetically, <pin> and <spin> are (generally) [pʰɪn] and [spɪn]. We can now see that the phoneme /p/ in English has (at least) two separate phones: [p] and [pʰ]. English speakers do not consider the <p> in <spin> to be different from that in <pin>, but they are technically two different consonants. The distinction is not phonetic, because most English speakers consider them the same consonant, and, more importantly, because one could theoretically pronounce <spin> and <pin> as [spʰɪn] and [pɪn], and still be understood, because those are not separate, distinct words in English. There are no "minimal pairs" that distinguish [p] and [pʰ] There are some languages, however, that make a phonemic distinction between unaspirated voiceless stops /p t k/ and aspirated voiceless stops /pʰ tʰ kʰ/. Off the top of my head, Mandarin is one of those languages, but it doesn't distinguish between voiceless stops /p t k/ and voiced ones /b d g/ like English. And other languages, such as Maori, only distinguish /p t k/ when it comes to stops. Other languages sometimes make even more distinctions, but I'm sure you get the idea.
Phonetic transcription is much more specific than phonemic transcription. Languages typically have a much greater number of phones than they do phonemes.
I feel like that was probably confusing, and that's the part I have the hardest time explaining. Hopefully Wikipedia will clear some things up. Don't be afraid to ask further questions, either based on what I've written, what's on Wikipedia, on both, or on something else entirely.
Oh, I almost forgot allophones. The phones [p pʰ] are both allophones of the phoneme /p/ in English. When the phoneme /p/ occurs word-initially, like in <pin>, the allophone [pʰ] surfaces. When /p/ is not word-initial, such as when it has an <s> in front of it, like in <spin>, the allophone that surfaces is [p]. In many cases, like the one I just described, the allophone that surfaces depends on the surrounding sounds and/or the phoneme's position in the word. However, some allophones are considered to be in free variation. This means that one phoneme can be realized/pronounced in multiple ways in any given position in any given word.
Again, sorry if this is confusing, I hope Wikipedia helps clear some things up, and don't hesitate to ask questions.
The user formerly known as "shimobaatar".
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I'd like to hear about the phonology, too, once you get a chance to post more.
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Papuan languages, Morphophonology, Lexical Semantics 
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